Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Mr. Chairman, where the President has failed to lead and be honest with us, we've had the courage to tell the truth about America's debt crisis. And we've proposed honest solutions required to fix it.

As a new Member of Congress, I have already learned that the rules in Washington are stacked in favor of people who want to spend more money. In contrast, in Indiana, we have a balanced budget, we have a AAA bond rating, and we have not raised taxes because we know taxes are not the problem.

The problem is, Mr. Chair, our colleagues who continue to push for more government spending knowing that our debt is over $14 trillion and growing. And they haven't offered one alternative except to confiscate more of the people's money.

They have tried to scare a lot of people. But this time, Mr. Chairman, I don't think the people are buying it. As you can see from this chart, our reliance on foreign countries to supply our reckless spending is growing dramatically over the past decades to where nearly half of the debt we owe as a country we owe to foreign countries, China being the best.

In fact, Mr. Chairman, China can buy three Joint Strike Fighters every week for the money we pay them in interest for the money they loan us and still have $50 million left over. Eventually, they and other countries are going to stop loaning us money or make us pay more to borrow. And as Treasury rates increase, rates on mortgages, credit cards and car loans are soon going to follow. We are no longer kicking the can down the road; we're kicking it off a cliff.

This budget addresses the real drivers of our debt: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. In 1970, these kinds of entitlements consumed 31 percent of our budget. Today they are nearly 60 percent, and they continue to grow. In just a few decades when our kids are raising their children, literally every single dollar this government takes in revenue will go towards paying these entitlement programs. This budget makes the changes necessary to save these programs so that they're around for my kids and your grandchildren.

I know a little about government agencies--I used to run one. One that had no more employees in 2010 than it did in the early '80s. But, since the President took office, he has added 155,000 new bureaucrats. Spending on government agencies has increased 84 percent in just the last few years.

This budget stops us from spending money we do not have. It brings spending back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels and shrinks the federal bureaucrats by 10 percent over the next three years. It also takes the ideas of the Fiscal Commission and the Government Accountability Office and eliminates over $100 billion in wasteful spending on dozens of duplicative federal programs. Money we don't take from the American people, they will spend much wiser and create jobs along the way. Americans are finally getting an honest and fact-based budget that has eluded them for years.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. ROKITA. Madam Chair, I rise tonight to also talk a little bit about the size and the scope and the number of employees that this Federal Government has. Earlier tonight, I talked about the State from which I come, Indiana--a AAA bond rating, not raising taxes on anybody, and a budget that year after year has been in the black.

As Secretary of State for Indiana for the last 8 years, I had operated a bureaucracy, and I know a little bit about them. What we had in Indiana, at least in the Secretary of State's office, was a pretty darned good one. We had no more employees in the Indiana Secretary of State's office than we did in the early '80s, and we were running on a 1987 budget, unadjusted for inflation.

I can tell by the reaction of some of the Members here in the House tonight that it's one of derision. It's one of scoffing. It can be done. The States know how to do it. Let's look to them.

In contrast to Indiana, what do we see here at the Federal level? We see 155,000 more bureaucrats than just a few years ago, an 80-plus-percent increase in the size and scope of this Federal Government, Madam Chairman--and that's just the personnel. We can have cuts in each of these departments. Every bureaucrat we don't hire after one retires will cause a 10 percent decrease in the Federal workforce over just a few years. That's responsible governing, especially when you're talking about a $14 trillion debt--$1 trillion year after year deficits.

As the previous Republican speaker pointed out, my friend Todd Young, it's just getting worse. The red menace is upon us, and it's the red ink produced in this Federal Government, right here from the well of this House, to begin with. The Ryan proposal that came out of the Budget Committee addresses this in a responsible manner. The smaller we make this Federal Government, the more the private sector grows. It's correlational. It's definitional.

I urge my colleagues to pass this budget proposal, the Ryan proposal.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source